for the video game History of Biology video game Image Erasmus Darwin Temple of Nature.jpg thumb right 280px The frontispiece to Erasmus Darwin s evolution themed poem The Temple of Nature shows a goddess pulling back the veil from nature in the person of Artemis . Allegory and metaphor have often played an important role in the history of biology. histOfScience The history of biology traces the study of the life living world from ancient to Modernity modern times. Although the concept of biology as a single coherent field arose in the 19th century, the biological sciences emerged from history of medicine traditions of medicine and natural history reaching back to ayurveda , ancient Egyptian medicine and the works of Aristotle and Galen in the ancient Greco Roman world . This ancient work was further developed in the Middle Ages by Islamic medicine Muslim physicians and scholars such as Avicenna . During the European Renaissance and early modern period, biological thought was revolutionized in Europe by a renewed interest in empiricism and the discovery of many novel organisms. Prominent in this movement were Vesalius and William Harvey Harvey , who used experimentation and careful observation in physiology, and naturalists such as Carolus Linnaeus Linnaeus and Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon Buffon who began to Scientific classification classify the diversity of life and the fossil record , as well as the development and behavior of organisms. Microscopy revealed the previously unknown world of microorganisms, laying the groundwork for cell theory . The growing importance of natural theology , partly a response to the rise of mechanical philosophy , encouraged the growth of natural history although it entrenched the teleological argument argument from design . Over the 18th and 19th centuries, biological sciences such as botany and zoology became increasingly professional scientific discipline s. Lavoisier and other physical scientists began to connect the a ... more details
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